What Is Reality?
by claraowl
Summary: During a cleaning session before 5th year, Ron learns something new about Hermione - rather, something old: a new discovery about long ago. Romione oneshot with a somewhat heavy flavor.


**Claraowl: I know, I know, I should be working on the 6****th**** chapter of PCLttU, but I just couldn't help myself. I haven't written Romione in so long. I'm sorry for the fact that they're terribly, horribly OoC, and for the utterly pathetic lack of fluff.**

**Please enjoy the story, of which I own nothing but the poor excuse for a plot. **

_Crash._

"Ow…" Ron groaned with his eyes shut tightly, having landed on his hands and knees. "Sorry, I slipped… are you okay?" When he received no reply, he opened his eyes - and was met with a sight he had not seen in all of his schooling years.

A truly terrified Hermione Granger stared up at him from between his arms, her eyes covered with a haze of fear.

"Hermione…?" Ron asked cautiously, still staring at her. "Are you alright?"

It had all started innocently enough. As per usual that summer, Ron and Hermione had been instructed to clean one of the many rooms of Number Twelve, Grimauld Place. It had been a rather dull afternoon of cleaning, with sporadic bursts of talking smattered throughout. Naturally, the pleasant dullness had been rudely interrupted by the simple fact of Ron forgetting that he had spilled some soapy water on the floor. This fact, while benign in appearance, had resulted in him crashing to the floor, taking Hermione with him. It was, all in all, a rather interesting turn of events; after all, no one ever really expects to find themselves in such a bizarre - and frankly, rather awkward - position with such a close friend. Naturally, in the case of Ron and Hermione, the awkwardness of the encounter is tripled - for obvious reasons.

This leads us to where we are now: Ron kneeling above Hermione and Hermione being, most surprisingly, terrified to the point of having her eyes haze over. Ron stared down at Hermione, wondering what had just happened. Hermione stared back up at him, shaking yet unable to move. After several exceptionally long moments of this, Ron came to his senses and got off of her, rolling to his feet.

Hermione did not move, still staring upward with, if possible, an even more terrified expression on her face.

Ron glanced down at her and offered her a hand up. "Sorry, I forgot the soap was there."

Hermione began blinking rapidly and, sitting up, began scooting backwards, looking at his hand with something akin to panic. Her back hit the opposite wall and she curled into a ball, shaking, with the haze behind her eyes growing steadily darker.

Ron gaped at her, frankly bewildered. He approached her slowly and squatted down next to her. "What's wrong?" He reached out a hand to touch her - whether to shake her shoulder or poke her cheek, he did not know - only to have her recoil.

"Don't touch me!" she half-shrieked, the haze overtaking her eyes completely; a moment later, it disappeared. She shook her head and glanced around. "Oh," she said weakly.

"H-Hermione?" Ron asked warily. "A-Are you okay?"

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," she smiled, standing up again. "Sorry about that. It's nothing to worry about."

Ron blinked at her as she picked up the washing rag and continued to clean the glass of the ancient mirror; the mirror giggled slightly as the rag removed the filth. Ron walked over to her and saw their reflections in the mirror… their reflections in black and white. He grabbed his rag and stood beside her, cleaning his half of the rather large mirror. "Hermione," he began slowly, "what just happened?"

Hermione gave him a small smile. "It's nothing of importance," she shrugged, "Just a remnant from when what I read was more real to me that reality."

Ron blinked. "And… how exactly does unimportant equal you shaking like a leaf?"

Hermione smiled thinly, watching his black-and-white reflection in the mirror. "It's been a long time since then," she said quietly. "I guess I just didn't expect it to happen ever again."

Ron gaped at her. "What?"

Laughing slightly at his fish-like expression, she replied, "When I was younger, I had the tendency to become absorbed in whatever I was reading."

"Don't you still do that?" Ron asked, shifting his gaze back to the mirror and realizing that he'd been cleaning the same spot for the past three minutes.

"Yes, but not quite as deeply as I used to," Hermione replied, unconsciously revealing a bit of her past to him that she had not truly told anyone. "Like I said before, what I read tended to be more real to me than reality. It's kind of funny and kind of sad at the same time, if you think about it."

"And this equals a leaf imitation how?" Ron asked, keeping his eyes on the mirror. He did not realize how much Hermione was revealing to him, nor how painful reminiscing could be.

Hermione gulped, the haze flitting in and out of her eyes momentarily. "W-Well, you see… when I read a book, I tended to 'become' the main character - especially if it was written from the first-person point of view. This was usually fun, but sometimes it could… go wrong." She paused, seeming to collect herself. "One day, I got a book recommendation from my cousin, so I decided to find the book and read it. Unfortunately, there were two books by that name, with different authors. And I… I got the wrong one."

Ron watched her, not quite sure what he was supposed to do or say. He had never seen Hermione quite so vulnerable before.

"The book that was recommended," Hermione continued, fighting the haze from her eyes, "was a very light-spirited book about a summer coastline stay. The book I read by mistake was a rather descriptive crime novel… told from the perspectives of the victims." She shuddered, ceasing her cleaning of the mirror. The reflection of her eyes was dark and haunted as she continued, "In the book, the victims were all subjected to the same… crime, done by the same criminal. A few lived; a few died from internal bleeding; a few told no one and bore the jibes that came towards them when their conditions were discovered. It… wasn't pretty… and I… I 'felt' it all." She looked away from him, dropping her rag onto the rim of the mirror. "Sometimes, I didn't know what the words meant, so I looked them up. When I couldn't find a few of them in my dictionaries, I looked online." She shuddered again. "I was only seven or eight at the time, but I could still tell what was going on in the pictures that came up, in the definitions that appeared…." She let her sentence trail off into nothingness, the meaning of her story becoming perfectly clear and her eyes darkening alarmingly.

Ron was, to say the very least, rather shocked; indeed, he was unsure how to respond to the story. He did, of course, understand what she meant - she had said, after all, that she had 'felt' everything the victims had gone through. He put his rag down, as well, and took a few tentative steps towards her before halting, her words from earlier echoing in his mind - _Don't touch me!_ He gulped, again unsure what to do. Carefully, he stretched out his hand and lightly tapped her shoulder.

Hermione turned around slowly, still fighting back the haze. "Sorry about telling you all of that," she said, forcing a smile. "Please don't let it bother you."

Ron stared at her wordlessly, wanting to do something but not quite knowing what.

"Shall we get back to cleaning?" Hermione asked, a false brightness in her voice.

"Hermione," Ron said slowly as he picked up his rag and resumed cleaning the mirror, "have you ever told anyone this reality before?"

Hermione blushed very lightly, glancing away from him. "Once, but not since I was very young. The girls I believed to be my friends called me crazy and abandoned me… and I exploded at them. They were all blown backwards, against a wall. One of them got a nosebleed and the other two banged their heads badly. It was the first time I used magic… and the last time I ever told anyone about my two realities. They called me crazy… early primary school was not fun." She sighed, wiping yet more grime off of the mirror as she succeeded in wiping the haze out of her eyes.

"Well, if it helps any," Ron said, glancing at her reflection in the mirror, "when I was younger, I thought that my reflection in the pond came alive at night and possessed me into switching places with him, so I guess my reality was a bit strange, too." He stretched upward, removing grime from the top of the mirror.

Hermione smiled slightly, aware that Ron was trying to cheer her up. "A bit," she replied, "it helps a bit." She rung out her rag over the bucket before continuing the war of grime removal.

"What is reality, anyway?" Ron asked, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "For all we know, we could be characters in some book, being lived out by some random people in a bunch of different countries."

At this notion, Hermione laughed - it seemed so ridiculous, yet so utterly possible. "And if we are?"

Ron grinned at her. "Then we've got no way of knowing which reality is which, and those girls had no right to call you crazy."

"Thanks," she said softly, glancing at the rag hanging limply and pathetically in her hands.

Ron, watching her reflection in the finally-clean mirror, felt his ears go red. "Hey, Hermione -"

She glanced up, unaware of what she was doing to him. Before she could answer or he could continue, however, their reflections started acting on their own. The two watched their black-and-white copies move closer, acting out what often went through their real minds - thoughts of forbidden actions, which were fought against and pushed away. Blushing madly, the two of them quickly exited the room as their inner selves spread in black and white told all.

As they made their way back downstairs - the mirror having been the last thing in that room that needed cleaning - they glanced sideways at each other and silently made a promise to never mention what had been shown in the mirror.

"Thank you, by the way," Hermione whispered, just before they entered the room where Mrs. Weasley was working.

"For what?" Ron asked, confused.

"For listening," Hermione smiled, "and actually hearing what I said."

Ron's ears went red. "A-Anytime, Hermione, a-anytime at all." he stuttered slightly, smiling at her. "We're friends, aren't we?"

Hermione simply nodded in return, feeling both slightly saddened from his latter words, and supremely hopeful from his former.

They crossed the threshold into the room for their next assignment, ready for whatever the future could throw at them - and hoping for the coming of what lay within the mirror… the disguised, colorless mirror of deepest desire.

**Claraowl: …**

…

…

**I sincerely apologize. I know that this isn't my best work, that parts of it were far from what I usually write, and that they're both OoC. **

**Would you please consider leaving this poor excuse for an author a review anyway? Please? I wholeheartedly accept criticism, and appreciate it greatly.**

**In case you were wondering, I got the idea for Hermione's reading reality from my life. I often find myself becoming the characters that I read. **

**And, yes, that is what happened to the Mirror of Erised - just in case you were wondering. The color was removed, its frame was changed, and much grime was added for its protection. It also had a delayed-reaction spell placed upon it so that it would not show its true purpose immediately.**


End file.
